MobiLinc’s Awesome Geo-Fencing Feature

By now you’ve read quite a bit about MobiLinc’s Home Automation apps, but there’s a great, relatively new feature to MobiLinc that bears mentioning: Geo-Fence Awareness. A geo-fence allows you to define one or more perimeters around an area (in MobiLinc’s case, the perimeter is circular, and usually around your home) to take certain actions. This is where home automation starts to get really powerful: because your home system knows where you (and other members of your family) are, it can start doing some really powerful things like arming your alarm system, manipulating your thermostat, and turning off your lights.

We’ll get into the actual implementation of some of those features, but the first step is to set up your geo-fences. Fortunately, it’s a simple process: In MobiLinc on your phone, tap Settings, then Location Settings. There you can set up any number of them; in my case here I have 3 separate fences of different distance surrounding my house, all of which do different things:

When you do this, MobiLinc creates a state variable in your ISY-994i for each geo-fence set up, keyed to the name of your device and the geo-fence name you provided:

As you know about state variables, when they change a program condition will fire in the ISY-9941 and you can perform any kind of action based on that event. This gets even more interesting if you have more than one member of your household or have fences set up around other locations (like work or the kid’s school). For example, you can have a program that raises the thermostat when both you, your wife, and your 2.2 children are out of the house. Or you could have a geo-fence around your work so that your ISY can notify your wife if you’re leaving later than usual. Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

October 4

Tagged with: geo-fence, location, mobilinc, programming, variables
Posted in Green Energy, Insteon, ISY-994i

Check out Amazon’s Home Automation Department for project ideas

There’s no question that Home Automation is becoming more and more mainstream; big players like Comcast and Verizon are getting in on the action with their own solutions, and with countless technologies on the market it’s tough to keep up.

One mainstream player that caught my eye this month was Amazon. They have recently created a “Home Automation” department on their site. With sections like New Products and a Home Automation Guide featuring some short videos on home automation, it’s a pretty decent collection of products that are on the market now. Check it out to get some ideas for your own projects.

Posted by Matt Chiste

September 27

Tagged with: amazon, guide, home automation
Posted in Concept

Get notified when your mail is delivered with TriggerLinc

We’ve looked at using the Insteon TriggerLinc with the included magnet to detect when doors are opened or closed, but a lesser-known fact of the TriggerLinc is that if you open it up, you can add a wire with your own switch to sense all kinds of other actions. In my case, I wanted to add a sensor to my mailbox so I’d know when the mail was delivered, but I didn’t want to put the TriggerLinc and magnetic sensor inside the box.

The solution was pretty simple: wire up a microswitch to the external inputs of the TriggerLinc, epoxy the switch to the inside of the box, and put the TriggerLinc on the outside:

Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

September 24

Tagged with: mail, programming, sensing device, TriggerLinc
Posted in Insteon, ISY-994i, Programming

Get a text message with a picture of who rang your doorbell

For those of you that follow this blog, you’ll see things are starting to come together now. We’ve discussed the powerful ISY994i at length, covered some programming concepts, installed some security cameras, added our doorbell to our Insteon network, and even have the system send us a text message when the doorbell rings.

A while back, I suggested purchasing the Universal Devices Network Module to expand the functionality of your ISY-994i. Today I’ll give you an overview of how the pieces could fit together to include a picture of WHO rang the doorbell in text message. I find this feature remarkably useful even when I’m at home because I despise dealing with door-to-door magazine ~~con artists~~ “salesmen”: if the person ringing the doorbell is carrying a clipboard and not wearing a girl scout uniform, I don’t even bother opening the door (that sentence isn’t creepy right? I just like girl scout cookies…).

The challenge we have to deal with is that the ISY-994i can’t really run arbitrary programs or save local files, so we can’t really have it do the actual work of capturing the picture. Instead, we’re going to use a separate program running on a Windows computer that essentially does a single thing: “When a special URL is called, capture 5 images from the Blue Iris web interface and save them to disk so they can be accessed later.”. Then, we use the ISY994i’s Network Module to call that URL:

The end result is a link in the text message that allows you to view your visitor when they ring the bell, like this awesome guy:

Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

September 21

Tagged with: doorbell, email, isy-994i, notification, programming, security
Posted in ISY-994i, Programming, Security

Programming your Insteon thermostat with the ISY-994i

When we talked about the Insteon-controlled thermostat a while back, I mentioned not to bother with a 7-day programmable unit because you’ll be doing all your programming through the ISY-994i. For those of you that may already have a (non-Insteon) programmable thermostat, you probably know what a pain in the neck it is to program them – using some arcane combination of holding down the set button, then changing the temperature thresholds for each “time period” (work, home, sleep, etc.) and each day.

With an Insteon thermostat and ISY994i INSTEON Compatible Automation Controller, things are dramatically easier and more flexible. For my system, I started by defining three types of programs:

States: These represent the “state” of the system, and in my system include “Away”, “Home”, and “Vacation”. For each state, I have defined what I want the heating and cooling threshold to be. So for example, when I’m “away” I turn down the A/C to 83 degrees, but when I’m on “vacation” I turn it all the way down to 88. The state programs actually set the thermostat(s).
Events: Events represent the times that the system should change states. For example, I generally work from home except for Mondays and Wednesdays, so I have an “event” program that says “Run the ‘Away State’ program at 9AM, but only on Mondays and Wednesdays”. You can have as many of these events as you want for different days of the week and time of day.
Actions: These are actions that I would like to manually run. In my case, I have a “Vacation” and “Return” action. My system doesn’t automatically enters the “vacation” state unless I tell it to, such as when I’m leaving town. In that case, I can fire up MobiLinc and run the “Vacation” program from wherever I am.

Save money and energy by starting with a home energy audit

Months ago I got a somewhat “junk mail”-looking thing from LEAP (Local Energy Alliance Program), a non-profit home energy resource that “works with local government and utilities to help homeowners lower their bills and save money”. They promised a $250 rebate on a home energy audit that could potentially result in lower energy bills, so I figured I’d give it a shot since the out-of-pocket cost was minimal (I paid about $150 out-of-pocket because I got an additional “blower-door” test).

That’s how I got introduced to the fine folks at Home Performance Solutions, who conducted the Home Energy Audit. It was incredibly informative, and for those of you living in the Northern VA area, they come highly recommended – not just for the audit itself, but the high-quality improvements they did later. If you live elsewhere, you should be able to find a similar service with a quick Google search.

The process was quite comprehensive. My consultant Marty walked me through the entire house from basement to attic and identified problem areas where energy was being wasted. He then used a thermal imaging camera to identify poorly insulated areas, and performed a “blower door test” which involved connecting a fan to the front door to see how much air is leaking through various gaps in the house. This test produced real numbers that we were able to use to quantify additional improvements done later.

I’ll cover the big improvements that HPS provided in a later post, but here are 5 easy-to-perform tweaks Marty taught me that you can easily do yourself:

Lower the thermostat on your hot water heater. Some water heaters actually have two thermostats, and they may be behind screwed-on panels and insulation like mine. Interestingly, my top thermostat was set at 150 and bottom at 130 – but after adjusting both to 125 degrees, I haven’t noticed a difference at all in water temperature – and am no doubt saving energy with this tiny change.

Seal the gaps around your A/C filter with foil tape. My A/C filters slide into this little slot between the A/C and return vent, but there was still a gap in the side that allowed air to flow into the A/C around the filter itself. A quick shot of foil tape sealed that right up:

Get alerted to water leaks through your Insteon system

Let’s heap another Insteon Sensing Device on our growing collection of Insteon devices: the Insteon Water Leak Sensor. It’s a simple, (relatively) inexpensive one-trick pony that does what it does pretty well: detect whether it’s sitting in water and triggering an event based on that.

The idea is you put these guys anywhere a leak may spring – in my place I have 3 of them: by the sump pump, behind the washing machine, and under the A/C unit in the attic. If you were really paranoid you could put one behind toilets and under sinks in your house as well.
Read more ›

Posted by Matt Chiste

September 11

Tagged with: 2852-222, insteon, programming, sensing device, water leak
Posted in Insteon